AccuWeather caught up with Patrick Turck, the program director of TEXSAR, while he was on the ground in Kerrville, Texas, for another day of searching for the more than 100 people still missing.
00:00In Kerr County, Texas, teams from Texar, Texas Search and Rescue, remain on the ground, ready for swift water rescues, canine searches, and drone missions.
00:09Texar is a volunteer-based nonprofit that deploys statewide during emergencies.
00:14And joining us now is Program Director Patrick Truck, or Turk.
00:20What are your teams seeing right now in Kerr County, and what type of work and assistance are volunteers providing?
00:26So, we're doing a number of different types of missions, both ground-based, water-based.
00:33We were flying some drones initially, but that's been restricted over the past few days, not just for us, but for everybody.
00:41We are helping with some of the Texas Ranger teams.
00:46We are going out and helping them search some specific areas.
00:50We've also been assigned some very large areas, as you can see on the video there.
00:55The devastation and destruction is unbelievable down here.
00:59That video doesn't do it any justice.
01:01It is just a massive debris field that, as I learned this morning, is roughly 48 miles long on both sides of the river, up to about a half mile wide in some spots.
01:15And the debris piles are just unbelievable.
01:22You know, we're working on one right now that's about 50 yards long and about maybe 100 feet wide and 15 to 20 feet tall.
01:31And it's just very slow going, using heavy equipment, and a very tedious process.
01:37And that's what all the teams, not just techs are, but all the federal, state, and local agencies are doing it as well.
01:43Patrick, I don't know what the opposite of glamorous is, but I'm sure that this work is extremely difficult.
01:49It's ugly.
01:50And when you're successful in doing this, you're finding some tremendously unfortunate things in these areas.
01:57So how quickly were you able to mobilize, and how does this flood prepare to some of the past missions your organization has been involved with?
02:04So we had teams on the ground here on July 4th, within just a few hours of the initial flood happening.
02:13And then we had more resources from Texar starting to arrive down in here over the next few days.
02:19And we're going to be here for the long haul.
02:22We were on the flood in Marble Falls Memorial Day a couple of years ago, which was a devastating flood.
02:30But in the terms of loss of life, this is just an unfathomable amount of loss of life.
02:40You know, I think this morning the numbers were at 104 confirmed and 161 still missing.
02:47You can see that debris pile right there.
02:49That is representative of what we're looking at.
02:52All down this 48-mile stretch of river, they're everywhere.
02:56And each one of those small piles has to be physically cleared in a very tedious manner.
03:02And it's going to be a long, long process.
03:06So how does Texar coordinate with local officials, and what assets do you bring on the ground?
03:11So we attend the morning briefing every day at 6 a.m. at the Emergency Operations Center.
03:18That's attended by every agency and search and rescue team that is a part of this process.
03:24Once we finish that briefing, then we get our taskings for the day from the state police.
03:31We have a contact with the Texas Department of Public Safety, and they give us our taskings for the day.
03:36And whatever that tasking is, we obviously allocate our resources and go and perform that mission.
03:44Texas Search and Rescue has drones.
03:48We have horses, although the horses are not on site today.
03:52We have a canine team.
03:55I think right now we have seven canines on site, 30 ground searchers that are actively here right now.
04:02But we have people that are cycling in and out throughout the week, and it will be throughout the next two or three weeks or as long as this mission lasts.
04:12All right.
04:12Well, Patrick, some people have walked through the most difficult week of their life, and what you're doing is helping to provide closure for some people there and some families there.
04:21So thank you for all the good work that you're doing there in Texas.
04:23Patrick Turk, Program Director of Texar, Texas Search and Rescue.
